Can someone please tell me first, that it is possible to force text to move up to the next column in a text area (There is no way Illustrator could not have a way to do this... is there?). And secondly HOW to do it? I've spent the last 30 minutes trying to figure this out...

There is no end-of-column command or special character provided in Illustrator. Prettly lame, huh?

No, I don't think it is lame. Would it be a good addition? Perhaps. But then, other than posters, small brochures, etc., I would place art into ID if I needed better control. Draging a frame up or down a little for force lines breaking in a different place in threaded frames isn't onerous. At least to me for what I use Illy for.

Agreed a long time feature request Adobe was almost convince to include it an earlier version but then I changed their minds.

As for Mike there isaac many occasions where the art and typography are more integrated then it would be in an ID layout and where the artist would need to develop the typography and art together and the art director might want that file supplied and insert that into ID like in Illustrative books.

It might not be your way or fit your needs but it is pretty lame not have it even if a large user base would not need it.

I am going to try againwith feature request as I think there might be a way to entice Adobe.

No. I am establishing the columns in the text area options setting, not by linking text from one text area to another. One big advantage to setting columns is that if you resize the text area, all the columns resize eqaully.

Yes indeed this is lame and ridiculous news. I assumed I was just crazy because I couldn't fathom how Adobe could have a product out like Illustrator for so long and not have as simple a feature as column breaks integrated into it.

For those who are interested (beceause again, Adobe does not provide this simple feature in their expensive, state-of-the-art design application which was first released maybe 20 years ago), I found a workaround: Add space after the paragraph where you want the break to occur which surpasses the text area height. This works fine.

I assumed I was just crazy because I couldn't fathom how Adobe could have a product out like Illustrator for so long and not have as simple a feature as column breaks...

Nope. You're not crazy. You're just sufferning the same shell-shock incredulity those accustomed to competing programs experience every day when they launch this archaic program. I could build you a long list of similarly taken-for-granted features which Illustator has never provided.

That's a large part the fuzzy logic of the so-called "creative cloud" which Adobe is going to be ramming down all our throats at breakneck speed. The most frequently trotted-out "advantage" to its naive customers is ostensibly 'no waiting for new features'.

Excuse me? That's supposed to be convincing to customers who have for over a quarter-century taken for granted in competing products such standard functionality as:

Proper geometric primitives

User-defined drawing scales

Dimension tools

Connector lines

Custom arrowheads (not implemented as an absurd workaround kludge)

I can easily lengthen this list—and have. But just one such item suffices to make my point: Throughout AI's history, the timespan between version releases has never been the issue; it's an insignificant percentage of the literal decades it takes for no-brainer features to ever appear in this lethargic, over-rated program!

The excuse has always been 'limited resources.' Yeah? If you buy that, what do you think those poor overworked limited resources have been working hardest on of late; adding long-needed "new" (only new to Adobe) features, or revamping everything for this new subscription-based "cloud" buzzword marketing model?

I have to agree, the lack of such features is shockingly pathetic and makes me wonder why anyone would ever pay to upgrade CS on a yearly basis. I recently tried out Audition (Adobe's audio editing flagship) and found it to be similarly lacking the most basic features such as the ability to group together audio clips within a track and collect files for export. Lack of those features makes Audition virtually unuseable for anyone but masochists.

I would like to see Adobe withhold making any new releases until they finally fix all their deficiencies. Until that day comes I will never purchase another adobe product.

I was a old Freehand user and would have thought, during the acquisition of Macromedia, that all the coolness of the feature rich Freehand would have rolled into Illustrator like End or line, End of column and apply text to the top and bottom of a circle in the same path